mercury
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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7 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "mercury", 7-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "mercury" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "mercury" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
mercury is aEnglishnoun. It means: Senses relating to the metal. Pronounced /ˈmɜːkjʊɹi/. It ranks #6,935 in English word frequency. Often confused with mercy and merry.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mercury |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmɜːkjʊɹi/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #6,935 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for mercury is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmɜːkjʊɹi/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,935 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for mercury, with forms such as "emrcury", "mecrury", and "merccury". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 3 confusable-pair relationships, "mercy", "merry", "mercer", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is derived from Middle English mercurie (“metallic chemical element, quicksilver; a plant, probably goosefoot (genus Chenopodium); (possibly) dog’s mercury (Mercurialis perennis); etc.”), borrowed from Late Latin mercurius (“metallic chemical eleme… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is mercury, spelled M-E-R-C-U-R-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Senses relating to the metal.
- 2Senses relating to the metal.
- 3Senses relating to the metal.
- 4Senses relating to the metal.
- 5Senses relating to the metal.
- 6Senses relating to plants.
- 7Senses relating to plants.
- 8Senses relating to plants.
- 9Senses relating to plants.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English mercurie (“metallic chemical element, quicksilver; a plant, probably goosefoot (genus Chenopodium); (possibly) dog’s mercury (Mercurialis perennis); etc.”), borrowed from Late Latin mercurius (“metallic chemical element, quicksilver”), Latin Mercurius (“Mercury, the Roman god of commerce, communication, etc.; the planet Mercury; etc.”), possibly from merc-, a stem of merx (“goods, wares; merchandise”); further etymology uncertain, possibly: * from Etruscan; or * from Proto-Indo-European *merǵ- (“to divide”), or *merkʷ- (“to grasp; to take”). The suffix -urius is also thought to be from Etruscan. Noun sense 1.1 (“metallic chemical element”) is from the association in medieval alchemy of the seven known metals—gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, iron, tin, and lead—with the Sun, the Moon, and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. An analogy was probably also drawn between the element being liquid at room temperature, and the Roman god Mercury’s attribute of swiftness. Noun sense 2 (“senses relating to plants”) is derived from mercurial (“(obsolete) any of the plants now known as mercury”, noun), from Middle English mercurial (“a plant, probably goosefoot (genus Chenopodium); (possibly) dog’s mercury (Mercurialis perennis)”, noun) from Anglo-Norman mercurial, Old French mercurial, or directly from their etymon Latin mercuriālis (“a plant, probably annual mercury (Mercurialis annua)”), short for herba mercuriālis (“(probably) annual mercury”, literally “herb or plant of the god Mercury”). Mercuriālis (“pertaining to the Roman god Mercury”, adjective) is derived from Mercurius (“the Roman god Mercury”) (see above) + -ālis (suffix forming adjectives of relationship from nouns). Noun sense 2.2.2.1 (“Blitum bonus-henricus”) is from the fact that this plant was often confused with annual mercury (noun sense 2.1). The verb is derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: emrcury,mecrury,merccury,mercruy,mercurry,mercuryy,mercuyr,merrcury,merucry,mmercury,mrecury
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for mercury
Misspelling Variants of "mercury"
Frequency rank: #6,935 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: